Neopets / Tropes A to E

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Tropes Plots and Events HERE!

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#

• 10-Minute Retirement: Dasher Soley, a character from the Yooyuball sports tournament, kept claiming he was retiring, only to come back. Only in Altador Cup VI did he actually retire.

A

• Absurd Phobia: The Altachuck is a Petpet that's afraid of loud noises, sudden movements, and "anything that starts with the letter D."
• Acid Reflux Nightmare: The premise of the game Ice Cream Machine, in which the player character (Adee the chia) is forced to dodge giant ice cream scoops that are flying at her.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
  • You better hope and pray you make a ton of Neopoints in case your pet ever comes down with a disease (which can happen due to a random event); the cures, depending on the disease, range from 1,000 to over 300,000 NP. Blame the undercutters taking advantage of the random diseases given via Qasalan Expellibox (a game where you can earn Neocash without paying money, hence its popularity) for this. Same thing goes for taking advantage of the demand for items needed for avatars.
  • Alternatively, you could just go to the Healing Springs every half hour until your pet's healed for free. This can take quite some time, though…
    • There's also overriding that sickness with another sickness that has a cheaper medicine, usually by feeding your pet some Poisonous Jelly.
  • Has been eased a bit with the release of Key Quest, a game which awards high-demand items like Neggs and Codestones as prizes.
    • And you can sometimes win Codestones too in the Battledome Beta.
  • It was taken to the extreme when the Coincidence Daily occurred, with many junk items that would normally be worth 1 NP on the shop wizard suddenly jumped to more than 10K, simply due to hyper-inflators. The annual-ish Charity Corner events also enforce this in the same way.
• Adipose Rex:
  • King Skarl and King Hagan are Skeiths, a rather rotund species of Neopet, and the rulers of Meridell and Brightvale respectively.
  • King Kelpbeard, ruler of Maraqua, is visibly bulkier than other Koi. This tends to be lampshaded by villains.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • Character names range from normal names like Lucy, Jake, and Rosie to names like Meerouladen and Prytariel. Grundos and Alien Aishas have a tendency to be Aeriths.
  • The pets themselves, although this is because more common names can only be used once without adding unsightly numbers or underscores.
• Alcohol Hic: An early Caption Contest image had this winning caption: "Ociffer, i swear to drunk I wasn't God when that hydrant hit the Cheekka! Burp"
• Allegedly Free Game: Downplayed. Players can obtain various things in-game by spending real money - the three primary flavors of this are Neocash, Premium memberships, and merch which comes with virtual prize codes. However, all of those things are designed to function as a bonus for supporting the site, and have very limited effects on gameplay.
  • Neocash is primarily used to buy clothes, which you won't need unless you take dressing up your pet very seriously. It can also be used to buy extra pet slots, fortune cookies which speed up free activities slightly, Neoboard pens which can be used to make longer posts on the Neoboards and easily switch between different post styles, and Key Quest game tokens. Items bought with Neocash cannot be sold to other players, unlike regular Neopoint items.
  • The only major effects on gameplay given by Premium membership are additional pet slots, the Super Shop Wizard, and the option to freely change a pet's species once per year (and also change its color with no restrictions, if its new species isn't available in its current color). On the other hand, if you do use any extra pet slots and then cancel that membership, you're going to have to give up the additional pets. This isn't made any easier considering that about-to-be-abandoned pets express their new horror and despair in no-uncertain terms, and some rare pets disappear or revert to something more common when abandoned. Luckily, pets abandoned this way are unable to be adopted by anyone else for 70 days, allowing you time to renew premium or transfer them to a side account before you lose them.
  • Virtual prize codes primarily award individual items, which are generally not restricted like Neocash items and can be sold to other players for Neopoints. Most prize codes yield items which are also available though other means, making this an extremely inefficient way to gain items and Neopoints. Some merch sold while the game Key Quest was active awarded players Key Quest game tokens (also sold in the NC Mall), which could not be sold to others and were functionally similar to free tokens - their primary difference was visual, though some had unusual alignments, allowing players to benefit from different spaces on the game board.
• Alliterative Family: With Alliterative Name: Aristotle A. Avinroo, and his sister Abigail Avinroo.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Aristotle A. Avinroo, and his sister Abigail Avinroo.
  • On the Yooyuball field, Gordo Gunnels of Team Brightvale (previously Roo Island) and Minae Mitora of Team Terror Mountain.
• Alternate Universe: The Twisted Histories Capsule Adventure is a collection of mystery capsules whose contents represent timelines where the events of various plots unfolded differently.
  • Sloths Victory: A timeline where Dr. Sloth successfully invaded Neopia.
  • Triumph of Darigan: A timeline where Lord Darigan won the war against Merridell. Other events of note include his castle no longer being situated on a Floating Continent and Kid Hero Lisha somehow becoming the most powerful sorceress in the Citadel.
  • Floating Faerieland: A timeline where Xandra stopped Faerieland from crashing instead of being responsible for its fall. However, Brynn and Hanso perished and there are at least some faeries that were never changed back from statues.
  • Unscathed Maraqua: A timeline where pirates took over Maraqua instead of destroying it with a curse.
  • Discovery of Wobbleshire: A timeline where an entire town made of jelly was properly found as opposed to there being a long-running gag about the denial of the existence of Jelly World.
  • Lost Isle Tour: A timeline where the island of giant Petpetpets eventually became a Jurassic Park-style attraction.
  • Reign of Coltzan: A timeline where Coltzan's youngest daughter Vyssa was poisoned instead of him, eventually leading to his eldest daughter Amira going through with her marriage to Prince Jazan of Qasala.
• Alternative Calendar: The site has its own calendar. Each of the calendar's months corresponds to a Gregorian month, and the years are counted from the site's founding (Y1 = 1999).
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Each species has at least a dozen or two, from basic colors such as "Orange" and "Purple" to patterns such as "Rainbow" and "Spotted" and even stuff like "Baby", "Pirate", "Darigan" (Obviously Evil), "Mutant" (Body Horror), "Royal" (with both "prince" and "princess" varieties), and "8-Bit".
• All Witches Have Cats: Sophie and her one-eyed "Meowclops" petpet.
• Ambiguously Brown: Mira the Space Faerie stands out from most of her kind with her dark skin, but unlike how fellow dark-skinned Faeries Jhuidah and Nuria are visibly designed to evoke the specific real-world ethnicities of Pacific Islander and Arab, respectively, it is unclear if Mira is meant to be analogous to any one race.
• Ambiguously Human: The Tiki Tack Man and the Mummy, who both look human but have their faces covered at all times.
• Ambiguous Syntax:
  • The Magic Wand item's description states that when you point it at a Neopet, "(...) it will vanish in a puff of purple smoke!" 'It' refers to the wand, not the Neopet.
  • The land of Altador has a Perfectly Flat Rock Quarry. A pair of Jubjub miners can be found within it arguing if the place is a perfectly flat rock quarry (the quarry itself is perfectly flat) or a perfectly flat rock quarry (the quarry produces perfectly flat rocks).
• An Arm and a Leg: Seemingly inverted. The Pirate Xweetok had a Pirate Peg Leg in its unconverted art, which it lost due to the Great Conversion.
• And I Must Scream: When a Petpetpet died in the Habitarium, it turned into a diamond with a face on it (these you would collect to gain Experience Points, thus levels and bonus Neopoints).
• Animal Jingoism: Between Lupes and Chias, and (on the petpet level) Meepits and Feepits.
• Annoying Pop-Up Ad: Advert Attack is a minigame where you need to race your character's rocket to the other end of the screen, but you keep getting blocked by popup ads placed by the villains you need to close or move to get to the "go" button.
• Antagonist in Mourning: A 2010 Advent Calendar animation implies a heroic variant, with MAGAX mourning Hubrid Nox after his death in The Faerie's Ruin.
• Anthropomorphic Food:
  • Some of the more bizarre colors available for Neopets/Petpets/Habitarium Petpetpets can make them these, such as Jelly, Custard, Biscuit, Mallow (only for Grundos), Ice (a Bruce painted that way is drawn to resemble the popsicle-esque Brucicle; the unconverted variant makes this more clear), Candy, and Chocolate, as well as the various fruits and vegetables that one can turn their Chia into via Lab Ray or Magical Chia Pop. Lampshaded by Jellyneo's Neopian Museum, on the Chia: "Who ordered the fruit salad?"
  • Three Petpets, the Jinjah (a gingerbread man), the Blobbikins (a blob of jelly), and the now-retired Sugar Rush (a can of soda) also fall under this category.
• Anthropomorphic Shift:
  • It used to be that most Neopets were simply "pets" and their human owners were there.
  • There's also the peculiar case of Captain Threelegs. He was originally an Eyrie (a griffon Neopet) that looked just like the kind a player can own, except for the fact that he had a pegleg replacing one of his forelegs. An art update made him an anthropomorphic Eyrie that still had his pegleg… serving as his right hand. He's also still called Captain Threelegs.
  • Balthazar initially walked around on four legs and didn't wear any clothes, making him look more feral. After being redesigned, he is now bipedal and wears a vest, trousers, and boots.
  • Tarla used to look like a player-owned, quadrupedal Red Ixi, albeit wearing a blue scarf long before player pets were given the option to wear non-Paint Brush clothes. She is now heavily anthropomorphic and wears a full outfit.
• Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag: Neopet species are as humanlike as they need to be. That usually means slightly less so in the gameplay and slightly more so in the plots.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • Restock Banning. Keep refreshing the main shops for hours on end in the hopes of nabbing that rare item, and you'll find that no items at all are shown in any shop for the rest of the day. It also applies for unique shops, such as the Smuggler's Cove (which can happen upon 1 refresh, but lasts way shorter), the Almost Abandoned Attic (after 10 items), and the Money Tree. (again, after 10 items)
  • Trudy's Surprise appears to be intended for this, though only for users who are 13 years or older. It's basically a slots game that gives you Neopoints no matter what you actually spin, giving a bit of reprieve for folks who grind daily for Neopoints. The story that goes along with it suggests this trope.
  • Many of the games and events have restrictions on how often you can play. The term 'dailies' by the player base refers to events that can only be done once a day (ex. Tombola, Lab Ray, the Giant Omelette, the aforementioned Trudy's Surprise, etc.), sometimes with in-universe justification. While a few, such as Coltzan's Shrine and the Healing Springs, have lower wait times, they still require you to, well, wait. Some games, such as Dice-a-Roo and Kacheek Seek, will eventually have your Neopet get annoyed and ask to play something else after some time. You also can only submit scores on each flash game three times a day, which makes things trickier if you're going for a high score (which is necessary for some avatars).
• Anti-Wastage Features: Does this for multiple consumables, yes, books are consumed when read.
  • Your pet won't eat if they're already bloated, a.k.a Max Fullness.
  • If you try to make your pet read a book they've read before, they won't read it.
  • If you try to give your pet medicine when they're not sick, they won't take it, but instead say, "Why are you giving me medicine? I'm not ill!".
• Arbitrary Skepticism: A Running Gag is that everyone except for a select few are in denial of Jelly World. This is despite the existence of fairies, witches, wizards, and The Undead being common knowledge in Neopia. They often say that Jelly World can't exist because "that would be silly", despite the existence of Anthropomorphic Food, a devil who's obsessed with underpants, and a villain who's made of snot.
• Armless Biped: Some species of Neopets don't have any arms, including Jubjubs, Onion Chias, and Mallow Grundos.
• Art Evolution: The cast of Neopets has come a long way from the first gradient-shaded pets, many of which have gone through multiple revamps since the site's introduction. Some of the pets looked very odd back then.
  • The most striking (and funniest) revamps were done to the Bruces, Kaus, and Myncis; currently races of penguins, bovines, and monkeys respectively, they were originally photographs of Bruce Forsyth, doodles of Macy Gray, and caricatures of a staff member's friend. The Macy Gray and Mellish got different names to go with their revamped looks, but the Bruce did not.
  • Some of Neopets' later art, particularly in the plots and events of The New '10s, now incorporate gradients done the right way. The results are amazing, especially in the Faeries' Ruin comics.
  • The Angelpuss' first design was an oval-shaped blob with wings and slit-pupiled eyes. In its second and current design, its head and body are now distinct and it has almond-shaped eyes with round pupils.
  • Downplayed, but for NC Pet Styles, a good number of pre-conversion art (most apparent with several Faerie pets) were redrawn to match the modern artstyle of the site. However, the poses were, for the most part, unchanged. For example, here's◊ what a pre-conversion Faerie Usul looked like, and here's◊ the Pet Style version of the same art.
• The Artifact: Some areas of the site use artwork that hasn't been updated in decades and looks odd next to the more modern artwork. For example, the Koi Warrior (a Battledome challenger) and the player character in Raiders of Maraqua are both based on an old Koi design that looks almost nothing like the modern Koi, and the players in Gormball are still drawn with the same flat gradient-shaded art that the site used in 2000.
• Artificial Insolence:
  • If you give a Neopet an object that has the same amount of letters as their name, they will refuse to use it.
  • If you try to make your pet read a book they've read before, they won't read it.
  • If you try to give your pet medicine when they're not sick, they won't take it, but instead say, "Why are you giving me medicine? I'm not ill!".
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Master Vex, the host of Cellblock, has apparently "Never lost a game". However, he can be defeated in nine moves, nearly every time.
    • In addition, at the highest difficulty, the game introduces randomly scattered rocks blocking spaces on the board in order to throw a wrench into your strategies... only for the opponents' AI, Master Vex included, to start confusing rocks for their own pieces, attempting to make complete rows with them in the way.
  • The Altador Cup—specifically, Yooyuball. The only real challenge is figuring out the quickest path to the goal, weaving through the opposing team, then shooting. Once you've got that sorted, it's just a matter of tedious repetition.
    • Partly fixed with the keyboard version. Now the opposing team is even more frustrating.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Pteris have long tails with rudders at the tips and very smooth leathery-looking wings.
• Ascended Glitch: Certain glitches in Yooyuball, particularly the ones who give a superfast ball or the one which has all of the players facing backwards. The Neopets Team liked them so much, they kept them in.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Neopian Times writers launched an intentional campaign to make it possible to paint Weewoos white. They did this by including images and mentions of White Weewoos in their Neopian Times submissions. Now, not only do White Weewoos exist, but they're the official mascot of the Neopian Times.
  • Mr. Coconut, a meme from the Editorial section of the Neopian Times that started when they featured a random entry for a Caption Contest, got his own shopkeeper and mask. The Fance Top from the same meme became a wearable.
  • At the beginning of The Faerie's Ruin plot, a group of players made a tongue-in-cheek campaign to demand that The Neopets Team rescue a pie that turned to stone along with the faeries. When the prize shop for the plot opened, one of the prizes was a stone pie with the description "Poor pie… still stone. Mmm… crunchy."
  • During the event in which Krawk Island disappeared, players took an image of the event's main character (a Krawk named Gavril McGill) and edited in various images into his hands. Later in the year, during the Haunted Faire's "Masks of Dread" event, for completing each quest the day it was released, you received a bonus prize - a book entitled "Book of Awesome" with the cover showing Gavril holding the book. The item description: "What won't Gavril hold up next?"
  • During the Obelisk War, it was common to edit the image of the Zafara Digger, who was pointing out the Mysterious Dig Site, to point at just about anything. After the war? His likeness is now a wearable item, here to point at your pets for all time.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Smuggler's Cove items are some of the most powerful weapons in the game. However, the cove almost never restocks, which makes them hard to get, and therefore ridiculously expensive. Thanks to this, the only one that's really worth it is the Super Attack Pea.
  • The Wand of the Dark Faerie and Illusen's Staff are very similar items that cause a lot of damage and heal you quite a bit. They are quite amazing weapons... if you can obtain them. To get one or the other, you have to complete the 50th quest of either Jhudora or Illusen respectively, which gets really pricey. Thanks to their hatred for each other, you can only do one or the other every day. In other words, it'll take 100 days to obtain both of them. Or you could, Y'know, pay an unfyoraly amount of neopoints to get one if you wish to not waste your time.

B

• Baguette Beatdown: In the game "Whack-A-Kass" (eventually changed to "Kass Basher"), the player starts out using a baguette like a bat. You can upgrade to a stick and a spiked bat after whacking Kass far enough, though.
• Ban on Politics: You can get in trouble for discussing politics or religion on the Neoboards. TNT has confirmed this is because they want the site to feel like an escape from real life.
• Bedsheet Ghost: Taken to an extreme with Ghostkerchiefs, which are ghost(-like?) Petpets that haunt pockets.
• "Begone" Bribe:
  • There's a random event where a rendingly mewling Mutant Kadoatie appears and "you pay its owner 5000 Neopoints to take it away."
  • In the Neopedia article The Kadoatery, a Wocky is walking to the Kadoatery with her upset Kadoatie in a Petpet carrier, who wails and screams so loudly that passing Neopets wince at the noise. One even offers to pay the Wocky to walk away faster.
• Bemoaning the New Body: The Faerie Dust TCG card shows a Blue Zafara mid-way through transforming into a Brown Skeith, with the caption, "Going undercover is one thing, but did you really have to make me brown and smelly?"
• Berserk Button: Some of the descriptions for Space Foods imply that Gargarox, the head chef at Grundo's Cafe, doesn't appreciate it when people don't like his cooking.
  Description of Grobleen Sandwich: How can you not finish every bite with a menacing Grundo chef hovering right above you?
• Big Brother Is Watching: "Remember, the Soup Faerie knows how much is in your Bank AND your Shop Till" is the warning displayed whenever a player attends the Soup Faerie's kitchen to feed pets.
• Big Eater: In Jelly Blobs of Doom, the player controls a Jelly Chomby trying to eat as many jelly blobs as he can of varying sizes and gradually growing bigger. If he tries to eat a jelly blob bigger than him, he's the one who gets eaten.
• Bigger on the Inside:
  • Houses in the Habitarium appeared no larger than the Petpetpets themselves, but could hold up to seven Petpetpets when upgraded to the highest level.
  • According to the description for the Inventory page, all your items are stored in a bag that "appears to have more room on the inside".
• Big "NO!": One of your pet's possible responses to having the Lab Ray aimed at them is "Noooooooo!"
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • The Mano Root, a Tropical Food, has five roots that resemble fingers. Mano is Spanish for "hand."
  • The Astranna is a purple fruit shaped like a star. Astra is the plural form of the Latin word astrum, meaning "star."
  • Achyfi sodas are notorious for tasting gross. Ach-y-fi is a Welsh expression used to express disgust.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Many of the Gross Foods are described as delicious. Regardless, your Neopet will definitely not enjoy eating them ^note unless your pet is a Pteri and the Gross Food has the word "worm" in its name, since their unique enthusiastic reaction to worms overrides the usual reaction to Gross Food.
  • A non-Gross Food example occurs in the description for Cloned Corn: "Pfft. You won't even be able to tell the difference." The art shows a pile of grey corn kernels with a single yellow one at the bottom.
  • The item Totally True Short Stories is a book allegedly chronicling various adventures Hanso has been on. However, its description says the stories are "highly implausible", implying that they were heavily embellished or outright made up.
  • Simple Assembly Instructions is a very thick book; its description says "Sure... simple assembly...".
  • The Completely Non-lethal Sandwich is a sandwich with a ray gun sticking out of it. Its description says "Go on, try it... but point it away from me, would you?"
• Blue Means Cold:
  • Ice is generally drawn with a blue tint.
  • Adee wears a blue snowsuit and hat and lives in the snow.
  • Taelia wears a blue parka and is known as the Snow Faerie. She also has blue feathers on the ends of her wings.
  • Feepits, Wherfies, and Onas live in the snow and are blue.
• Body Horror: Two Neopets colors, Mutant and Transparent, give your pet this effect. Mutants have your pet turn into a monstrous version of itself, often missing or gaining body parts, while Transparent makes them essentially a living X-ray.
• Body to Jewel:
  • Thyora's Tear is the most powerful defensive item in the game, able to block all incoming damage for one turn. According to the Neopedia, when an Eyrie named Thyora was weeping after her brother was killed by rampaging Skeiths, a Water Faerie transformed one of her tears into a magical necklace to protect her, should such harm ever befall her again.
  • Petpetpets in the Habitarium turned into gems upon death, whether they'd lived for one week or decided to cross your soldiers by wrecking your buildings.
• Bowdlerise:
  • In the Water Faerie's first design, she had Godiva Hair before it was replaced by a bra.
  • In 2022, the Diddler, a Robot Petpet, was renamed to the Chatter ("diddle" is a slang word for having sex).
• Brain Food: You can make any pet eat items such as Brain Stew and Brain Kebab, although they'd presumably have to be Zombie to enjoy it.
• Brainless Beauty: Invoked by the Glamour Negg. When eaten, it gives you 1 of 3 random grooming items (Gold Brush, Gold Mirror, or Shampoo), but decreases your pet's intelligence by 2 points.
• Brain Monster: The Brain Tree◊ is a mostly benign one. It gives out quests in the form of a questions you must answer: that's because it loves knowledge but it cannot move, and it must rely on others to find information.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The description of the Potato-Stuffed Turkey is "The only thing better than turkey and potatoes is turkey stuffed with potatoes!"
• Bread of Survival: In the Neopian Times story Sea Legs, while Hoban is imprisoned in the brig of the ship, Anshu brings him the news that the crew is planning to push their abusive captain overboard, and a loaf of bread as a gift from Bonju, the ship's cook.
• Breath Weapon: In the Battledome, Halitosis is a Level One ability.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: Though Darigan pets are not necessarily evil, they have traditionally evil looks, such as dark colors, spikes, horns, and red eyes. Eyries (a griffin-like Neopet) in the Darigan color have dark colors, red eyes, hooked beaks giving them the appearance of fangs, and hooked talons. Lord Kass is a villainous Darigan Eyrie. With his large frame, color scheme, and hooked beak, he is designed to look menacing, and his bird of prey features accentuate this.
• Bubble Pipe: One of the accessories in an "Investigative Uni" outfit that clearly alludes to Sherlock Holmes.

C

• Carnivore Confusion:
  • Neopets eat each other as well as Petpets, apparently — Neopians can purchase Blumaroo steaks, Elephante trunks, Snorkle snouts?
  • Chias have a longstanding rivalry with Lupes due to the latter's tendency to eat them. This does not take into account the factor that Chias tend to be prized for their unique food-like colorations to begin with.
  • Draik eggs are considered gourmet food. Yum...
  • Beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and fish products exist on the site, despite the existence of Neopets based on cows, pigs, and fish (Kaus, Moehogs, and Koi) and Petpets such as the Babaa, based on sheep, and the Wibreth, that looks like a chicken. Lampshaded by the description of the Beef Jerky.
    A tasty piece of dried... oh... oh dear.
• Cartoon Creature: The majority of Neopet species are based on already-existing animals, but a few do qualify such as the Kacheek, Chia, Zafara, and Kiko.
• Cartoon Meat: The "bronto bite" item is a roughly cylindrical slab of meat on a bone.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: The Neopian Bazaar has a Chocolate Factory which is staffed by a Kiko wearing an ensemble resembling Willy Wonka's Iconic Outfit.
• Circus of Fear: The Deserted Fairground, a section of the Haunted Woods, is an abandoned circus.
• Clingy MacGuffin: Jhudora’s Bewitched Ring is a Battledome item that cannot be unequipped from your pet once you put it on. If you try, you will get the message “ERROR : MUHAHAHA!!! You cannot unequip this item!”
• The Colored Cross: The hospital's main logo is a green cross, and some of the medications have green crosses on the labels.
• Companion Cube:
  • There is a Petpet called the Rock, which is just a rock with a few dents in it that kind of look like a face. It can be equipped to your pet and treated like any other Petpet.
  • In 2023, the Advent Calendar gave out a Petpetpet equivalent of the Rock — the Pebble.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Downplayed. The game never outright demands a player to do something, but it sometimes encourages them to for no reason:
  • Until the site got revamped after the discontinuation of Flash Player, Neopets could talk to owners. They would sometimes ask to play certain games ("Destruct-O-Match sounds like fun right about now"), buy things ("Do you think you could buy me a toy? Please?"), train ("How can I show my face in the Battledome like this?", "Is it time for training yet?" (even if they're already in training), "My puny arms can't even hold an Attack Pea!", "When's the last time we visited the Techo Master?") or fight ("Know anyone who's up for a fight?").
  • Sometimes in Random Events, Neopets asking you to buy food, even if they aren't hungry, or to buy toys, bottled faeries, or grooming supplies.
  • Nigel will occasionally appear by Random Event and ask you to invest in a particular stock, but this has no bearing on the actual stockmarket.
  • Adee will sometimes pop up by Random Event and remind you that you can send Neopets or postcards to friends, or tell the player about NeoBadges or World Events.
  • There's another Random Event where Sidney appears and asks if you've visited the Deserted Fairground lately.
  • Jhudorah sometimes asks you to do a quest for her in a Random Event.
• Convection, Schmonvection:
  • Inevitable with the release of the lava-themed world of Moltara. Roxton and Cog can fly just a few feet over a magma without any ill effects, and none of the Neopets fixing the machine spitting a large plume of magma inside a cavern ringed with a magma river feel anything.
  • Justified somewhat with Scorchios, dragon-like Neopets which prefer high temperatures.
• Cool, but Inefficient: A lot of the Battledome items look and sound cool, but are weaker than a stick swung by a two-year-old. It especially stands out with weapons that could undoubtedly kill someone in real life, like the Radioactive Snow, Poison Tipped Dagger, and Stone Fire Body Basher, but in-game have little attack power and are thus very lowly rated among Battledome enthusiasts.
• Cosmetic Award: The various competitions on the site, as well as getting top scores in most games, reward you with spiffy trophies for your profile.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: In every level of the game Ice Cream Machine, the player has to dodge a different flavor of flying ice cream scoops. The flavor on the last level is garlicky bratwurst.
• Crapsaccharine World: When you get right down to it, Neopia's a pretty depressing place to live, what with the countless wars, attempted genocides, and multiple fates worse than death, the only reason none of the inhabitants have lost hope is that they have enough badass Knights In Shining Armor/Lovable Rogues/Noble Demons to deal with them.
• Creepy Cave: The Lair of the Beast is described as being dark, cold, and silent. The rocks look like jagged spikes, and the further inside you get, the more you hear scratching noises. With each step your pet will beg to turn back, and if you keep going, you end up with a Screamer Prank in the form of a roaring monster on a black screen.
• Creepy Doll: A Malevolent Sentient Poogle Plushie looks like a patchwork plush toy, but with red eyes and a grinning mouth full of sharp teeth.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Kadoaties are kitten-like Petpets that are notorious for crying very loudly when the lights are turned off, when they're upset, or for no reason at all. Their crying is so irritating that a pet hotel named the Kadoatery was built to house them, and only them, for the purpose of giving their owners a reprieve. In the Neopedia article about the Kadoatery, a Wocky leaves her Kadoatie at the Kadoatery for a week just so she can get some sleep at home with the lights off.
• Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: Meepits look like cute, rodentoid creatures... until they reveal a large, fanged mouth that's drawn in more detail than the rest of their body.
• Cute Is Evil: Meepits are cute, fluffy pink rodent-like Petpets...that are sold in the Spooky Petpet shop, have a perpetually creepy staring expression, and may or may not be plotting to take over the world. According to Donna Williams, this characterization occurred because of this trope: something that cute HAD to be hiding something.
  Meepit (TCG card): Once they had collected enough acorns, step two of the plan could begin in earnest.
• Cutting the Knot: The normal method of obtaining a Krawk pet is to buy a super rare, absurdly expensive Krawk petpet (which is actually a Tyrannian petpet for added confusion), then take it to a cave in Krawk Island to grow it into a proper pet. Most people instead just use a Krawk Morphing Potion on an already existing pet, since it's faster and cheaper (Pirate Krawk Morphing Potions are occasionally given out in two Krawk Island daily events). For comparison's sake, the cheapest Krawk Morphing Potions cost about a million Neopoints, while a Krawk petpet can be worth up to 50 million Neopoints.

D

• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The Darigan Citadel, after making peace with Meridell.
  • Darigan's Altador Cup team as well. They're not the mean, aggressive team as their looks suggest; they're just a bunch of jokesters.◊
  • Delina the Crafting Faerie. This◊ is a typical Dark Faerie. This◊ is Delina. In addition, there's some confirmation by staff that Dark Faeries aren't necessarily all evil, though they tend to lean towards more tricky leanings.
  • Paint your pet Ghost, Halloween, Darigan, Mutant, Zombie, or Wraith. Now notice that they're just as friendly as most pets when you interact with them.
  • The Pant Devil's evil twin looks quite menacing, but he steals valuable Morphing Potions from his brother and hands them out to users for free in a Random Event.
  • Possibly the Malevolent Sentient Poogle Plushie, if the Hero alignment on its TCG card is taken at face value.
• Deceptively Cute Critter: Zigzagged for the Meepits. A Running Gag is that they might be secretly evil and just using their cute appearance (they look like technicolour hamsters) and cute "meep" sounds to feign innocence, but it's left ambiguous. Regardless, they are far from harmless; one of the strongest Battledome abilities (only obtainable at Level 500) involves summoning a stampede of Meepits to pummel your opponent.
• Delicious Distraction: In the game The Usul Suspects, any baby Usuls you don't shoot down will sneak up onto the playground equipment behind you and try to push you off with brooms, but you can get rid of them by pressing the right arrow key to throw milk bottles at them.
• Depending on the Artist: The Mutant Flowper has two different designs. The Mutant Flowper that players can get on the site is a dark brownish-green color with red eyes, while the Mutant Flowper TCG card shows it being salmon-colored with a single eye, clawed hands and a tentacled lower body.
• Depending on the Writer: Some characters' Hero or Villain alignments on their TCG cards don't match up with their characterization on other parts of the site. Caylis is a Villain even though she is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood in the Curse of Maraqua plot, Master Vex is a Hero but the Cellblock page calls him evil, the Malevolent Sentient Poogle Plushie is somehow a Hero and malevolent at the same time, Ilere is a Villain even though she saved Sophie during the Tale of Woe plot, and Magax is a Villain despite his Neopedia article showing that he is The Atoner and has turned against Hubrid Nox.
• Devil's Pitchfork: The designs for the Halloween Koi, Shoyru, and Usul all evoke the Big Red Devil archetype in varying ways, though they each hold a pitchfork as an accessory. On the Petpet side, the similarly-devil-inspired Halloween Flizzardo, Mortog, and Polarchuck also wield pitchforks, and the Halloween Puppyblew has a pitchfork-shaped tail◊.
• Devious Daggers: Members of the thieves guild wear dark clothes and cloaks, sneak around to steal treasures, and are often shown carrying bladed weapons- especially during the obelisk skirmish battles, in which each member carries at least one of them for each fight.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: Some minigames have the game speed up as the game continues. Either the game is faster, things come sooner, or time limits are reduced.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Meta example. TNT are infamous for being VERY trigger happy with their freeze ray gun, so be very careful what you do or say, especially on the Neoboards, and always remember that Big Brother Is Watching. It could mean the difference between you losing or keeping all those precious Neopets of yours...
• Diving Save: One of the possible outcomes of exploring Geraptiku's Deserted Tomb has your active Neopet saving you from a Booby Trap in this fashion, losing some hit points in the process.
• A Dog Named "Cat": In one editorial of the Neopian times, somebody asks what would happen if they named their Meepit petpet "Feepit" (which is a completely different petpet from a Meepit). TheNeopetsTeam responds by saying the the non-existent Jelly World would become real.
• Don't Wake the Sleeper: In the game Maths Nightmare, Imiya the Aisha is trying to get some sleep before a big math test, but she's dreaming about an endless horde of Babaas all carrying math problems. The player has to solve all the math problems in time to make the Babaas jump over the fence and go away, or they'll fall down onto Imiya's alarm clock and give her an unpleasant wake-up call.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: The Lever of Doom that steals your neopoints. Then there is the Evil Toy of DOOM, Ice Lolly of Doom, Immense Rubber Axe of Doom, and Nimmo of Doom (a book).
• Double Entendre: The description for the Steam Horn is "Play a bit of music that is a bit steamy with this instrument!"
• Dump Stat: In the battledome, Movement. Level allows you to train your stats higher at the training schools as well as gain new Faerie Abilities, Strength gives you more attack icons on your weapons, defense does the same but with blocking icons, and HP is, well, HP. Movement, however, has no real effect on the battle, as both pets attack at the same time each turn. The only use the movement stat has is changing the effect of a select few weapons. Intelligence is similar, but it doesn't have this same reputation as training Intelligence is much easier, faster, and cheaper, as it is gained by reading books instead of using Doubloons or Codestones on training schools.
• The Dung Ages: While less cynical than most depictions, Meridell definitely counts.
• Dung Fu: Battle Dung and variations thereof may be used in battle arenas to throw feces at your opponent.
• Dyson Sphere: You can get your own from fishing in Old Maraqua.

E

• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Even beyond the scope of the site-wide Art Evolution, many Neopets' designs have changed drastically since the site's early years:
  • Acara was originally Tigren, a fuzzy quadruped with fin-like ears and a big tail. Shortly before being renamed Acara, it turned into a fluffy Cephalothorax with no tail and large long head appendages somewhat resembling those of a Twi'lek; this was soon reverted to quadrupedal, gaining a more cat-like appearance but keeping the appendages and lack of tail.
  • Bruce was originally a photo of British television presenter Bruce Forsyth and was referred to as such; this was quickly shortened to just "Bruce" and changed to a caricature of him. The pretense was soon dropped and Bruce became a penguin, whose design went from nearly spherical to a cuter and more pear-shaped design.
  • Buzz was originally called Fleye, and was a giant eyeball with wings, feet, and antennae. It was soon turned into a more standard insectoid appearance, with a later redesign straightening out the body and giving more realistic compound eyes.
  • Elephante originally lacked its jeweled crown.
  • Eyrie had one of the most drastic changes. Originally it was a three-horned spiky dragon named Cerpull; in 2000 it was renamed Tatsu, which was a dragon with a fluffy mane and only two horns. This design proved unpopular, so a contest was held to reinvent it as the gryphon-like Eyrie.
  • Flotsam and Jetsam were originally just cartoony fish with big lips. They then changed respectively to a narwhal and shark both in upright poses like a seahorse, and again to simplified rounder designs that stand on their flippers and tails like a seal.
  • Gelert was originally called Polypup and had a fatter design with a short tail and almost horse-like nose. After the rename, the body was thinned out, with more whip-like ears and tail and a more canine nose.
  • Grarrl originally had a lumpy design that vaguely resembled Reptar, with no visible teeth. The redesign gave it a more menacing pose and facial expression, with visible fangs and claws. This was changed again to a midpoint between the two, keeping the claws and fangs but softening the features for a more friendly appearance.
  • Jubjub was originally called Jibjib, and was a simple puff hidden behind a giant pair of feet. After the rename, the puffy hair was toned down a bit and the feet moved to make more of the face visible. They then changed again to stand upright and thus allow the face to be fully seen.
  • Kacheek was originally called Badeek and had a very plain design that almost looked like a quadrupedal cat with downturned ears and sunglasses. Upon being renamed, it became a bipedal creature with a wider, cuter face and no sunglasses.
  • Kau was, of all things, originally a caricature of American R&B singer Macy Gray and was named as such. To avoid any copyright issues, this was changed to the cow-like creature it is today.
  • Kiko originally had misaligned eyes to imply confusion or bewilderment, but they were straightened out when the contemporary color style debuted.
  • Koi originally had much wider faces, back stripes, and humanoid hands instead of fins.
  • Korbat was originally depicted as always asleep and hanging upside-down with its wings folded over its body. It was then redesigned to be shown as always upright and in midair.
  • Kyrii was originally called Fuzio, and was a ball of fluff with floating gloves and shoes. For undisclosed legal reasons (likely its resemblance to Rayman), it was renamed and redesigned as the vaguely weasel-like Kyrii.
  • Lenny originally had a more squat and dopey appearance with smaller wings and messy feathers before getting stretched out to its more crane-like proportions.
  • Meerca originally balanced on its tail instead of standing on its hindlegs.
  • Mynci was originally called Mellish, and was a caricature of a freckled redheaded human (said to be based on one of the creator's friends). After the rename, it became a monkey but kept the red hair and freckles; these features soon disappeared and the species gained its distinctive curly tail.
  • Quiggle was originally called Frogstomp, and looked like a sack with tiny hands and googly eyes. It was renamed and redesigned to look like some sort of alien frog.
  • Scorchio originally looked like a scrawny cartoon bat with a tuft of green hair and a Mad Eye. It was drastically overhauled into a chunky, cartoony dragon.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Pretty much the entire site has gone through this, having transformed from a website for college students to something... more family oriented, much to long-time fans' dismay.
  • In a more explicit sense, the Altador Cup has gone through this. The first installment of the competition was very different than the event organized today. Yooyuball was the only game, and it was played from a top-down persepective (as opposed to the isometric version which exists today), which was also much slower. Perhaps the most important change was in the tournament being played knockout-style; every team was eliminated after a game, and you could join another team immediately after the first team you joined up with was eliminated. There were also other differences, such as injuries to several of the teams (which probably stopped being done after introducing today's version of YYB), differences in trophies, and how points were given out. The second AC saw the switch to a round-robin format and the introduction of two new games, while the third had the aforementioned YYB overhaul. Though it wasn't until the fourth introduced Shootout Showdown that the Cup morphed into its current state.
  • The site used to have more characters who were not explicitly Neopets or faeries, some of which were humans or real animals. Three Neopets were humans (two were based on celebrities, and one on Adam's friend from college).
  • At one time, there were plans to allow pets to get married or even blood brothers. Now, users are not even allowed to casually mention that their pets have any romantic connections.
  • In terms of the more 'adult' sense, pets used to be able to drink wine and beer, and some of the older pages use the word "hell", which is no longer allowed on the site. Examples include the original Maraqua plot and Dr. Sloth's Gallery of Evil entry. Oddly enough, grog still remains.
  • The Caption Contest has also gone through this. Early winners frequently had spelling and grammar errors, and generally were more surreal in tone. Pets that no longer exist can still be seen in some of them. Compare page 20 to anything else that exists in the site.
• Ear Notch: Kougras all have these.
• Ears as Hair: The Usuls appear to have scrunchies holding up their ears, though Hannah from the games "Pirate Caves", "Ice Caves", and "Kreludor Caves" is depicted with human hair on her head.
• Easter Egg:
  • Some games have these. Appearances from the Phantom Orange Shirt Guy, a TNT staff member, are the most common.
  • If you type the word "asparagus" into the search bar, you will get an image of Adam's avatar and the words "You can't have it, it's all MINE!"
• Easy-Mode Mockery: The Kiko Pop game will tease you for being a wimp if you choose the Easy and Effortless mode.
• Ectoplasm:
  • Ectoplasm Nachos and Steamed Ectoplasm are two items you can buy from the Spooky Food shop. They both depict pale blue slime with two ghost heads emerging from it. This makes sense, since normal ghost pets are also a pale blue color.
  • Wraith Ectoplasm is an award given out during the Wraith Resurgence plot. It's a vial filled with creepy purple goo. As Wraith-painted pets are a creepy black-and-purple, it's implied this ectoplasm functions similarly to ghost ectoplasm, in that it's what they're made of.
  • Discussed in one Festival of Neggs plot, where a strange, glowing goo is seen all over the place. Several characters wonder if it's ectoplasm, which is a distinct possibility, since it was indeed seen in the Haunted Woods. However, when Sophie tastes it, she determines it's not, since she knows what ectoplasm tastes like. It turns out to be a substance secreted by a new species of pet-pet called the Talpidat.
• Edible Theme Clothing: Several clothing and battledome accessories are made out of foods, such as jelly, chocolate, and candy.
• The Eeyore:
  • Pets painted Grey will look perpetually sad and depressed, even when they are actually happy.
  • The Grey Faerie has a pessimistic outlook on life, after having lost her wings, her powers and her beauty. When you are on a quest for her, one of the things she can say is, "Oh well, I didn't expect you to succeed, anyway. Very few people ever bother to help a grey faerie, after all."
• Emergency Weapon: A pet with no battledome items will use his or her fists, regardless of whether or not they actually have any.
• Every Pizza Is Pepperoni: While Pizzaroo sells multiple pizzas with odd toppings, the item simply called "Pizza" is a single slice of pepperoni.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: When a Petpetpet died in the Habitarium, it would give off white sparkles and rise up in a flash of light before turning into a gem.
• Evil Twin: The Pant Devil has one, although he's actually more like a good twin, because he steals Morphing Potions from his brother and gives them randomly to users.
• Expressive Ears: Pre-Customization, an Aisha's long ears would droop if it was sad or had been injured.
• Expressive Health Bar: If a Neopet's hunger goes below "very hungry", they start looking sad (each species has its own "sad face"). Weirdly, if their happiness goes down, they still look happy. If they're sick, they make a different negative face, which doubles as their disgusted face (when they're fed a gross food). If they get given something (such as a food, toy, book, or petpet) they dislike or you type your password wrong, they snarl.
• Extra Eyes: A lot of Mutant Neopets and Mutant Petpets have those, if they don't have Multiple Head Case. Or both.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • Skeiths and Grarrls, which can eat any item.
  • Likewise, there's the Turmaculus, an overgrown Petpet that eats Petpets.
  • Any Neopet can count when you take the wide variety of available foods into consideration — they will eat nearly anything you give them, from chocolate coins to fish food to exotic fruit to gruel soup to dung to whole loaves of bread. Except food with the same number of letters as their name.
• Eyes Always Shut: Aishas and Chias have no forms where their eyes are open. The closest you can get is with some clothing items that look like eyes, but they're likely just fake eyes.
• Eyepatch of Power: Punchbag Sid has one, and is the most powerful 1-player challenger outside of plots.

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